Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [109]
"To mimic the grieving winds, and turn aside the wrath of Asherat-of-the-Sea, who is wroth still at the death of her son." Louis Namot shuddered and took my arm, drawing me further in deck. "My lady, if you ask me on dry land, I will say it is an old quarrel between the descendants of the Phoenicians and the conquering Tiberians cast in terms to explain a volcanic phenomenon, but we are at sea, and I do not want the Gracious Lady to think we mock her grief with staring. I pray you, turn away!"
"Of course, my lord Captain," I said politely. His manner eased the moment I obeyed, and he wiped his brow. "Forgive me, my lady," he said, apologizing. "But the currents around La Dolorosa are strong and uncertain, and no one is wise who mocks the superstitions of a place! most especially not a sailor."
"No." I remembered Quintilius Rousse tossing a gold cointo the Lord of the Deep upon reaching safe harbor in Alba. "I should say not."
"I heard tell of a rich merchant," one of the sailors offered, "who laughed at the ship's crew for whistling, and no sooner had he done, than a great wind came up and the ship heeled hard about, and he was thrown over the side and dashed on the rocks of La Dolorosa."
"No," said another. "I heard it too, only they never found his body."
"And I heard," Louis Namot said grimly, "his corpse washed ashore on the isle of Kjarko a hundred leagues south, on the Illyrian coast. And that, lads, is no Mendacant's tale. My uncle served aboard a trireme under Admiral Porcelle, and they chased down a band of Illyrian pirates who were raiding D'Angeline ships along the point. Their captain was wearing the merchant's signet. He pled clemency and told how they found the body. My uncle had to return it to the merchant's widow."
I turned back and gazed at the black isle, dwindling in our wake, the fortress towers silhouetted against the sky. "Who would live in such a place?"
"No one, by choice," the Captain said shortly. " 'Tis a prison."
"The worst prison," a sailor added, and grinned. "If I'm ever accused of aught in La Serenissima, I'm taking refuge in the temple of Asherat, I am! I'll take the veil myself, like Achilles in the house of Lycomedes, and give all her priestesses a nice surprise!"
One of his fellows hushed him quickly, with a furtive glance in my direction. I paid it no heed; I'd been three weeks at sea, and had heard worse. Sailors must make do with one another aboard ship—those who favor women are notoriously eager upon making landfall.
Still, it made me think on what I knew of La Serenissima. Women do not hold offices of power in most of the Caerdicci city-states, that much I knew. It is men who built them, and men who rule, by dint of toil and iron. Asherat-of-the-Sea holds sway, still, because she is the Gracious Lady ofthe Sea, and men who live by the grace of the sea are wise enough to fear her wrath, but this was not Marsilikos, where Eisheth's living blood runs in the veins of the Lady who rules there.
In La Serenissima, it would be different.
Soon the lookout cried again, and presently we saw before us the long, low line of the spit that bars the great lagoon of La Serenissima; the Spear of Bellonus, they call it, another legacy of the Tiberians. It extends nearly all the way across the vast, wide mouth of the lagoon, some seven leagues long, forming a natural barrier well guarded by the Serenissiman navy.
As we drew near to the narrow strait that breaches the spit, there were a great many more ships to be seen, of all makes and sizes, flying all manner of colors: cogs and galleys and triremes, and the low, flat-bottomed gondoli and gondolini with the curving prows and sterns that are ubiquitous in the city, propelled by skilled rowers at tremendous speed. And, too, there were craft I had never seen before, small ships with masts canted forward,